Sergeant Major Egg Feeding Frenzy

Sergeant Majors are damselfish, feisty little fish, with five distinct vertical black stripes from which they derive their name. They lay their eggs in round patches on hard structures and the male generally guards them like a pit bull.

We found this purple nest of eggs on a dive in Curacao called "Airplane". Someone had the brilliant idea to sink a Fokker Fairchild 27 airplane onto an otherwise healthy reef not realizing that in a few years time it would become a junk pile of aluminum and wire. What we found interesting was that surrounding the "junk pile" were a myriad of sergeant major nests where high drama in real life was taking place.

This nest was being guarded by two sergeant majors, male and female, but they were quickly overwhelmed by the ferocity of the feeding frenzy. Yellowhead wrasse, bluehead wrasse, parrotfish, other damselfish and even a graysby join in the feeding. The poor sergeant major loses his eggs in a matter of seconds.